Menu

quick

I decided to make a gourmet/healthier spin off of the traditional chicken tenders and french fries to pair with my homemade ketchup.

Before you do anything you’ll want to get your ketchup cooking.

In a saucepan I mixed one can of tomato sauce, a tiny can of tomato paste, 1/4 c. equivalent of truvia, 1/4 c. apple cider vinegar, cinnamon, salt (I used smoked salt but any kind works) and pepper. I also included herbes de provence because I’m using it on everything lately.

Now the secret to this ketchup is in the onion and the cinnamon. Peel and cut a sweet yellow onion in half and place in the saucepan. When the ketchup is done cooking you’ll remove the onion. You can either discard it or create a great type of relish if you’re doing burgers, brats or something similar.

Preferably you’ll want to slow cook your ketchup for at least an hour but this recipe works with just 10 minutes of simmer-time if that’s all you have.

When you’re done cooking your ketchup you’ll immediately cool it. If you live in Minnesota and have 15″ of snow on the ground you can place a cover on the saucepan and stick it out in a snowbank (yes, I seriously did that). If not, make some room in your freezer and chill it to at least room temperature.

To make clean up super easy I laid out some parchment paper on my counter. This helped because I had more tenders than my skillet could hold.

So it goes like this: chicken tenders get thrown into bowl #1, coated in the egg mixture, then they get tossed in bowl #2, lightly coated with the flour mixture and then they lay out on the parchment paper.

I heat just a little bit of olive oil in the bottom of my skillet and throw in about six tenders, sprinkle with herbes de provence (or your favorite seasoning), throw on the lid, cook about 4 minutes on each side. I keep cooking until my parchment paper is empty and by now my ketchup is cool.

Dinner is served!

The ketchup was so good that we had meatloaf the next night just to have more! I think I need to make this ahead of time and keep it in a mason jar in my fridge from now on.

I went over to the guy’s house last night to make them dinner. I was trying to think of something low-carb & “manly” (which I’ve learned translates into “meat”). What I came up with was super fun and easy to make! It tasted good too!

For the bacon-wrapped chicken I started off by slicing (lengthwise) two little red chili peppers. Next I chopped up a handful of Italian parsley and long thin slices of a Spanish goat cheese called Cana de Cabra. Any kind of goat cheese will work, I just had some from the cheese shop down the street that needed to make it’s way into one of my next recipes.

Now that you’ve prepped your “stuffing”, you’ll take a few boneless, skinless, chicken breasts and cut in half (lengthwise) to make them thinner cuts of chicken. Lay all of your chicken breasts on a cutting board and sprinkle with some salt, pepper, and a little bit of cayenne.

On each seasoned chicken breast you’ll add a pinch of your chopped parsley, a slice of chevre, and a slice of chilipepper.

Now you’ll roll up your chicken breast and wrap it in two slices of bacon. I normally would’ve used turkey bacon but since I was going for a “manly” entree I decided to use center cut bacon. At least that cut has 35% less fat?

Over medium-high heat brown each side of the bacon-wrapped chicken for just a few minutes. This will give you that crispy bacon texture but still allow you to slow-cook your chicken without it drying out.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to fully cook your bacon/chicken, that will come later. Once you have some nice brown coloring on your bacon, transfer your wrapped chicken to a baking dish.

Bake your chicken, covered, at 350 for about 10-minutes. I get a little nervous about undercooked poultry/pork so I think I did mine closer to 15-20 minutes.

With the temperature at 350 and a cover keeping all of the moisture in, you don’t have to worry that your chicken will burn or dry out. Unfortunately I had to use aluminum foil but maybe some day someone will give me a Le Creuset French Oven! Then I won’t have to worry about my food losing moisture during baking or my body being full of toxins from the aluminum used in the cooking process!

For the red pepper side dish, I THOUGHT that I was just going to do vegetable with similar flavors to the chicken but I was surprised by the outcome.

While the chicken was cooking I chopped up the rest of the bacon into little pieces and sauteed them with half of a chopped redonion until it caramelized in a little bit of honey, cayenne and a splash of redwinevinegar. Then I chopped up a redbellpepper and mixed it up in the pan, just heating it for about 90 seconds – I wanted to preserve as much of the freshness, color, and nutrients as possible while still incorporating it in the rest of the dish.

It ended up being much sweeter than I expected but the chicken ended up being a lot spicier than I anticipated so it was a perfect pairing!

I sprinkled a little bit of parsley and goatcheese on the vegetables, topped it with the chicken and “manly dinner” was served!